Drawing
Some things are easier to think through by hand: a formula, a graph, an arrow between two ideas. In Filmina you can write with a pen (Apple Pencil, S Pen or a Wacom tablet), your finger or a mouse, right in the browser, with nothing to install. There are two places to draw: in a note and on top of what you're reading.
The Draw block in a note
A drawing is just another block in the note. There are three ways to start one:
- Draw in the / menu.
- Draw in the note's bar: it's the first of the three colored options on an empty note, and on phones and tablets it's in the bottom bar.
- With a pen, by tapping the page below the last line (or anywhere on an empty note). Your finger and the mouse keep typing text as usual.
In the note, the block shows the drawing from the top left, at the width of the page. It grows with what's there, up to a limit, and whatever doesn't fit fades out at the bottom. Its footer reads “Drawing · it goes on beyond what you see” and has Open; tapping the block or Open takes it full screen. A new one you close without drawing anything doesn't stay in the note. A note that starts with a drawing gets a pen icon in the notebook's index.
Full screen, the canvas is infinite, with a dotted background. The note's name sits at the top left and the X to close at the top right (or Escape). At the bottom, the tool pill. In the bottom right corner, Ask Mina, Zoom in, Zoom out and Fit to screen, which frames everything you've drawn.
In the side note next to a deck it works the same way: the drawing opens full screen and, when you close it, you're back to what you were reading.
Drawing on top of slides or a PDF
In the viewer for a deck and in the reader for a PDF, Draw on top appears at the bottom center while the side note is open. If the file already has drawings, the button is always there and reads Show drawings. Both open the same thing.
The whole file opens on an infinite canvas: the slides or pages one below the other, floating over the dots, starting with the one you were reading and in the same spot. You can write on top and in the margins too, for the arrow that leaves the slide or the calculation that didn't fit.
At the top left, Use the whole screen folds the right-hand column into a strip with its name (Note, Explanation or Side column), and the same button opens it again; it isn't there on phones, where the column is already a bottom sheet. Next to it, the zoom: Zoom out, the percentage and Zoom in. Tapping the percentage goes back to 100%. On the right, Done (or Escape) closes the canvas and takes you back to what you were reading; the reader jumps to whichever page was in the middle.
While reading, your drawings show on each page, cropped to it: what's in the margins only shows on the canvas. To change something, open it again with Show drawings. Since the canvas covers the page, drawing never selects text by accident.
On pages, the quick colors are black, white, blue and red, and the black and white are the real thing: what you pick is what you see, on the page and in the margin.
Moving around and zooming
How you move and zoom the canvas depends on what you're using:
| With | Move | Zoom |
|---|---|---|
| Pen | One finger (the pen draws) | Two fingers |
| Finger only | Two fingers (one draws) | Pinch with two fingers |
| Mouse | The scroll wheel, or space and drag | Ctrl and the scroll wheel |
| Trackpad | Two fingers | Pinch |
With the Hand selected, everything moves the canvas, whatever you're using.
The tools
The pill at the bottom has, from left to right:
- Hand: it doesn't draw, it moves. With it, pressing and holding a spot on the canvas opens Paste right there.
- Pen: the regular stroke, with pressure if your pen has it.
- Highlighter: yellow and underneath the ink, so highlighting never covers what's written. Two passes don't get darker where they overlap.
- Eraser: press and hold it (or right-click) for its options. Part of a stroke erases only what it touches; Whole stroke removes the entire stroke. And three sizes, Small, Medium and Large, which erase the same amount at any zoom. Your pen's eraser button, if it has one, erases while you hold it.
- Lasso: circle whatever you want to move, copy or ask about (more below).
Tapping the selected tool deselects it and leaves the hand. Tapping a color picks the pen back up.
Then come three quick colors and More colors, the rainbow: it opens a palette of twelve and Other color, which opens the system color picker. Whatever you pick in the palette replaces the quick color that was selected. On a phone the pill shows only the color in use, and the quick colors sit at the top of the palette.
At the end, Undo and Redo.
And without hunting for buttons:
| Gesture or key | What it does |
|---|---|
| Two-finger tap | Undo |
| Three-finger tap | Redo |
| ⌘Z and ⇧⌘Z (Ctrl on Windows) | Undo and redo |
| Delete | Erase what the lasso selected |
| ⌘V | Paste an image or what you copied, on a note's canvas |
| Escape | Close the canvas |
The lasso
The lasso picks the strokes that end up inside it (at least half of each one) and the images whose center it circles. Drag the selection to move it. When you let go of the lasso a menu appears with Ask Mina, Copy, Cut and Delete.
Pressing and holding on the selection opens Copy, Duplicate and Delete. Anywhere else on the canvas, if you've copied something, Paste.
Copy keeps the selection in two forms: as strokes, to paste into another Filmina drawing, and as an image, to paste into another app.
You can paste images too: with ⌘V, with the lasso's Paste, or by pressing and holding the canvas with the hand. The image comes in selected, so you can move it right away, and it sits underneath the ink. Pasting an image needs a connection.
Asking Mina about what you drew
Circle a calculation, a graph or a line with the lasso and tap Ask Mina: the chat opens with your drawing attached, and you type the question. It's for what you'd do with a tutor sitting next to you: “is this step right?”, “turn this into text”, “what am I missing?”. On top of a slide, Mina sees what you drew together with that part of the slide.
With a note's drawing open full screen, every question you ask Mina carries the whole drawing, even if you haven't circled anything; if you did circle something, that's what goes.
Mina only looks at your drawings when you ask her to. Nothing you write by hand reaches her on its own, and none of it goes into the explanation.
Your palm and the pen
As soon as Filmina sees a pen, fingers stop drawing on that device and only move the canvas, so you can rest your hand while you write. While the tip is down, fingers do nothing, and if your palm managed to move the canvas before the pen touched down, the view snaps back. It's remembered on that device. The mouse keeps drawing.
Colors in light and dark mode
The canvas background follows the app's theme: black in dark mode, white in light mode. Each color is drawn in its version for that background, so a page you wrote at night in dark mode reads fine in light mode the next day, without touching anything. The highlighter is yellow in both. On a slide or a page, the ink shows in paper colors, even if the app is in dark mode.
Offline
Every stroke is saved on the device first and then to your account, so you can draw offline and nothing gets lost. If there are strokes waiting to upload and no connection, “Offline · saved on this device” shows up at the top, and it goes away on its own when you're back. What you draw on one device shows up on the others within a few seconds.
When you share a note, its drawings show in full: The notebook explains how.